Israeli forces kill Palestinian in West Bank, detain dozens

Israeli Occupation Forces shot two young Palestinians, killing one and leaving the other in critical condition in the West Bank, medics said Tuesday, amid heightened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis across the region.

According to Ma’an news agency, 21-year-old Mohammed Imad Jawwabra was shot in the chest during clashes in al-Arrub refugee camp north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Medical sources at al-Mizan hospital said Jawwabra arrived at the hospital in critical condition and was declared dead shortly afterwards.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said a “violent riot of 200 Palestinians” was taking place in the area, claiming that the armed soldiers were “defending themselves.”

Meanwhile, Tuesday, Israeli troops shot and seriously injured a young Palestinian man near the southern West Bank town of Khursa, Israeli media reported.

The news site Ynet said the Palestinian was taken to an Israeli hospital.

Reshset Bet, another Israeli news site, said some 150 Palestinians gathered near an intersection in Khursa and threw stones at Israeli settler vehicles, injuring a settler.

Clashes broke out between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Beit Furik village east of Nablus, in the town of Tuqu near Bethlehem and in Beit Ummar in northern Hebron.

Medics of the Palestinian Red Crescent told Ma’an that two injured, Ali Naji Haneni and Moaed Khataya, both 16, were taken to the Rafeda hospital for treatment where their wounds were described as light to moderate.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces carried out multiple predawn raids across the West Bank, Jerusalem and Occupied Palestine and detained 24 young Palestinian men.

A statement by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society Tuesday morning said that the detentions were in Hebron, Nablus, East Jerusalem and Ramallah.

In the West Bank, eyewitnesses said four of the 24 detainees were relatives of Noureddine Abu Hashiyeh, who stabbed and killed an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv on Monday.

According to the witnesses, the Israeli army stormed the Askar refugee camp in the northern city of Nablus and detained four members of Abu Hashiyeh’s family, including his father.

The Israeli government has already decided to demolish Hashiyeh’s home, Israel’s Ynet news quoted a cabinet official as saying.

Five other Palestinians were detained in the southern city of Hebron, including two brothers of another Palestinian who stabbed three Zionist settlers, killing one, in the West Bank’s Alon Shvut settlement on Monday.

Around 7,000 Palestinians, including hundreds without charge, are currently being held in Israeli prisons. More than 2,000 of them were arrested by Israeli forces over this summer amid heavy tensions in the West Bank and Gaza.

Tensions have been running high in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where in recent weeks Israeli forces have shot and killed four Palestinians suspected of being involved in attacks against Israelis.

Israeli forces spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote on Twitter on Friday that at least 200 Palestinians have been arrested over the past two weeks in East Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities have recently allowed Zionist settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods both in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem while ignoring Palestinian residents, and have generally looked the other way at rising violence by Zionist settlers against Palestinians across the city.

Anger has been further provoked by the Israeli authorities’ decision to hold a vote on splitting the al-Aqsa compound, Islam’s third holiest site, despite the existence of a Jewish prayer area at the Western Wall immediately next door.

Israeli forces have long restricted Palestinians’ access to the al-Aqsa compound based on age and gender, but have further prevented Muslim worshipers from entering the mosque while facilitating the entrance for Zionist extremists.

On Sunday, Netanyahu ordered more police onto the streets of Jerusalem, vowing that anyone breaking the law would be “punished severely.”

“We will not tolerate disturbances and riots. We will take determined action against those who throw stones, firebombs and fireworks, and block roads, and against demonstrations that call for our destruction,” he said.

Meanwhile, five Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were arrested by Israeli forces in the town of Kafr Kana in northern Occupied Palestine, Israeli police said, a day after 24 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, including 10 minors, appeared in court on charges of rioting.

Israeli police claimed the officers fired warning shots before aiming directly at Hamdan when “their lives were threatened.” However, CCTV footage of the shooting show Hamdan was shot dead in cold blood.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who account for about 20 percent of the population in Occupied Palestine, are the descendents of Palestinian who remained on their land when the Zionist state was established in 1948. The majority of Palestinians were killed, expelled from their homes, or detained in work camps.

Palestinians with Israeli citizenship complain of routine discrimination, particularly in housing, land access and employment, and anger has risen in recent months over Israel’s assault on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, dead.

More than 700 Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories were arrested in protests across the country against the attack over summer.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly challenged Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to go and live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

“To all those who are demonstrating and shouting their denunciation of Israel and support of a Palestinian state, I can say one simple thing: you are invited to move there – to the Palestinian Authority or to Gaza,” Netanyahu said.

“I can promise you the State of Israel will not put any obstacles in your way,” he told a meeting with Likud legislators.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the East Jerusalem in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

In September 2000, a visit to the site by controversial Israeli politician Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada,” a popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.